


crouton.net

by Fwizz101



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, International Fanworks Day 2021, minor: bokuaka and sakuatsu, things are slightly different from canon but whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29386560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fwizz101/pseuds/Fwizz101
Summary: In which Yachi Hitoka prepares to go home for winter break (read: sits in a café with a mug of tea instead of getting ready to go home).
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Kudos: 2





	crouton.net

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I was on campus last semester and now I'm not. I miss going to school.
> 
> I do love writing Yachi. She's very easy to relate to.

It’s not the end of classes that makes Hitoka stare at her mug of tea with that acute sense of loss that comes when you finish reading a book series. She can definitely do without the stress of weekly critiques. And the piles of homework. And the distressed faces of Hinata and Kageyama as they realize that _discreet_ and _discrete_ mean two different things. (Sometimes she wonders why they're taking English classes at all. Of course, volleyball players need English for the global stage, but they really struggle with--)

“Yacchan?” an exuberant but toned-down voice calls from the next booth over.

“Y-yes, Bokuto-san?” she stammers automatically.

Hitoka works at a pet adoption center (works, not volunteers, which is beyond amazing in itself) near campus, and Bokuto visits at least once every two weeks to shout with delight at the animals. His not-boyfriend, Akaashi, needs to remind him to calm down so he won’t scare anyone every time. (Hitoka thinks the animals are used to it by now. It’s more for the sake of noise reduction than anything that Akaashi intervenes, because human hooting and dog howling isn’t a good combination for the cat café across the street.) Hence, Hitoka doesn’t need to think before addressing Bokuto by name (which is good, because her brain short-circuits out of fear around people taller than about 170 cm).

“You’re, like, a design genius, right?” Bokuto continues in a shout-whisper even though he and Hitoka are only separated by the high back of the booth. (It’s high for Hitoka, who sometimes needs help reaching for Hinata’s favorite fruit snacks in the supermarket. Bokuto can comfortably rest his arm on top of the booth. Thankfully, he doesn’t.)

Hitoka, who came from a high school where intelligence is measured by the level of your math class, blinks. She doesn’t think of herself as particularly spectacular (or even _good)_ among the students in her major. She attributes _genius_ to Kageyama’s setting prowess and the way that Shimizu organizes her notes. There’s nothing _genius_ about her frantic scrambling to submit her final poster on time because the print queue was a year and a half (13 jobs and a guest print) long. The entry for Impostor Syndrome in the encyclopedia probably includes a picture of her face.

“Bokuto-san, I think you scared her into shock,” Akaashi murmurs from also the other side of the booth, where he is sitting next to Bokuto.

“No,” Hitoka bursts in her babbling tone, but she’s too tired to vocalize her internal monologue right now, so she just chokes out, “I’m not-- a genius, but I am-- I’m a design major, so-- well--”

Bokuto lifts his laptop, and for a terrifying moment of sheer panic Hitoka thinks that he hasn’t turned in his last assignments of the semester yet. However, his screen displays nothing but a pixelated crouton.

_Nani kore,_ her exhausted brain deadpans. “Um… what is this?” she inquires instead.

“It’s crouton.net,” is the proud response.

“And… why are you showing me crouton.net?”

“Akaaaashi thinks that this isn’t a design masterpiece,” he declares, adding way too many a’s to the name as usual, “and I’m trying to convince him that he’s wrong.”

“Well. It certainly… serves its intended purpose?”

Akaashi appears to be gently disappointed that Hitoka would encourage Bokuto in regards to this matter. (She thinks he's trying to be gentle, anyway, because Akaashi's disapproval is fearsome indeed.) However, he remains quiet. (Maybe he’s doing it for Bokuto’s sake, because something is definitely happening in the miniscule space between them, but it’s not Hitoka’s business. Besides, she can just ask Hinata, who can ask Atsumu, who can ask Suna, who can ask Konoha-san, who should know. Konoha-san knows everything.)

Akaashi is wearing a sweater with a single stripe going across the chest. It looks very soft. Hitoka thinks she saw it in a boutique somewhere, and she also thinks that if no one continues the conversation in the next forty seconds she will actually combust from embarrassment.

“Purpose?” Bokuto echoes at last, cocking his head with an eye squinted almost-shut. His sweater matches the one that Akaashi is wearing, but it's a different color and size.

“Well, um, if it’s supposed to make you happy-- it worked, right?” Hitoka straightens up in the vain hope of giving Bokuto a better view of anything other than the top of her head. “All designs have to serve a purpose, or there’s no point in making them that way.”

If it’s even possible, his grin widens to Cheshire levels. “Wow, Yacchan! That sounded super smart!” With anyone else, that praise would sound patronizing, but Bokuto is anything but insincere.

Akaashi nods. “It was a very insightful statement.”

“Oh, no!” she exclaims, waving her hands in front of her like she’s trying to clear a figurative blackboard of the mistake (which is ridiculous, because she only remembers using whiteboards in grade school). “It’s just something that we learned in Design 101!”

“Still, it’s awesome that it stuck with you! I forgot almost everything from my first semester of freshman year as soon as it ended.” This appears to bring up a bad memory, because Bokuto’s hair starts drooping at the ends.

(Perhaps to save Hitoka,) Akaashi says, “Bokuto-san, your cocoa is getting cold.”

Oh, there it pops up again. “Right! Thanks, Akaaashi!” All is now right with the world, especially because that ordeal has ended.

Atsumu, who works here with his brother (causing no confusion at all), gives Hitoka a wide berth when he approaches her table so she has time to recover from the initial shock. He gestures at her mug. “Want a refill?”

She glances down at the three centimeters of liquid that remain in there, which are long past the point of “you forgot about the tea for an hour” in the cycle of making pots of tea.

He nods grimly before she can stammer out an answer. “I’ll sneak ya a muffin. Is blueberry okay?”

She dips her head down-and-up. Atsumu is nice to her because he thinks Shimizu is hot, because he has a thing for dark hair but hasn't realized it yet (thing with Hinata notwithstanding, since everyone has a thing with Hinata). Hitoka is waiting for the day when either he notices or Sakusa from Economics snaps. It might take a while. Shimizu is objectively attractive. So is Sakusa, at least to people who have seen him without a mask on. (At least, that’s what Hinata says. Hitoka doesn’t know Sakusa from Economics that well, but he’s the reason why she has a clip-on hand sanitizer hanging from her bag.)

Once, when on a trip to America with her mother, Hitoka bought a prepackaged blueberry muffin. It was awful, to say the least, and she suspects that the blueberries weren’t even made of fruit. The baked goods at this café are made of one-hundred-percent-real ingredients, and this reinforces Hitoka’s belief that there is good in this world. (Well, there’s also Shimizu, so of course--)

“It’s Yachi! Hey!”

“Shut up, Hinata _boke!”_

“Hey, both of you, be quiet! Tsukki still has a headache.”

“Shut up, Yamaguchi.”

“Sorry, Tsukki!”

Hinata slides into the booth opposite Hitoka without asking, as usual, and Kageyama follows just so he can squish Hinata into the wall. As they squabble, Hitoka lets Tsukishima and Yamaguchi into her booth, clutching her mug like a lifeline.

Atsumu returns with a pot of hot water, a fresh teabag, and Hitoka’s muffin. “Can I help the rest of ya?”

If Hitoka was about twenty times more confident in herself, she could order for her friends like a male love interest in an early 2000’s romance. Hinata isn’t allowed to have caffeine after the macchiato incident, so he asks for a gingerbread hot cocoa (which is only marginally better in his case); Kageyama gets hot milk even though he has a microwave (not that he knows how to use it for anything but milk); Tsukishima orders an espresso to counter his post-finals headache; and Yamaguchi asks for a milkshake with two straws and an extra cherry for Hinata to steal. (Hinata is a serial cherry thief. Shimizu likes tea, but her order varies. Not that Shimizu and Hitoka are _friends_ per say, but--)

Yamaguchi nudges Hitoka’s shoulder. “When are you going home, Yachi?”

This feeling rising up in her chest isn’t the same one that made her cry herself to sleep in elementary school (when she lost all of her friends because _normal_ girls don’t lose their fathers to who-knows-what). She’s not about to break down like this is her last farewell to these people. Despite everything, she does want to see her mother and spend their usual half of Christmas together before work gets in the way. (And, maybe, she’s more grown up now.) But, still… 

“Don’t forget that dorms close on the twenty-second,” Tsukishima chimes, not unkindly-- gently, maybe, if such considerateness is possible for him.

“I haven’t thought about it,” Hitoka admits partly to herself. “I didn’t pack anything yet.”

Yamaguchi chuckles and grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the table so he has something to occupy his hands while they wait. “Me neither. It’s like I know I have to leave, but my mind won’t accept it.”

“We have to go home,” Tsukishima counters. “Akiteru will die if the ugly sweater contest is cancelled.” As if embarrassed, he adds, “And I don’t want to spend more time around those volleyball idiots than I have to.”

Hinata, Kageyama, Tsukishima, and Yamaguchi went to the same high school. They’re going home together, as far as Hitoka knows. She doesn’t know anyone from high school, so she has to take the train back by herself. It was a small school. Hitoka is a small person (in stature, in voice, in personality…) with about as much charisma as a potato, if not less. She picks miserably at the liner of her muffin.

“Here ya go,” Atsumu says without warning, reaching over Hitoka to pass Tsukishima his espresso. He notices her instinctive blind panic and opts to slide Yamaguchi’s milkshake past her instead. Hinata and Kageyama’s drinks get left at the end of the table while they continue squabbling. (It’s been a while. Maybe Hitoka should have let Yamaguchi sit on the end so he could pull them apart.) “Need anything else?”

Hinata pokes his head out from halfway under the table, where Kageyama is trying to shove him down like a whack-a-mole piece. (Hitoka knows better than to ask why.) “Nope! Thanks for the spoon, Tsumu-san!”

“Uh-huh. Ya know what to do if ya need me. Or call Samu to do the work instead.”

Someone, presumably Osamu, makes an obscene gesture at Atsumu from the kitchen. He grins and saunters off. Hitoka envies his self-confidence (but, of course, he must work very hard to achieve that level of self-assuredness, and he probably has struggles of his own).

“You can tell us if you need any help moving out, okay?” Yamaguchi continues as if nothing happened.

Tsukishima seems to have glared Hinata and Kageyama into submission. Hinata is now sipping his gingerbread hot cocoa like a scolded puppy. Kageyama looks sullenly at his tepid milk as if the sheer force of his disappointment is enough to reheat it. (He could ask Atsumu to take it back to the kitchen, but that would require asking Atsumu for things, and their setter feud prohibits such displays of weakness. Or something. That’s what Hitoka extrapolates.) Yamaguchi glances at the mug, probably preparing to call Atsumu back over anyway. Hitoka is really going to miss them.

Oh, that’s it.

“Is something wrong, Yachi?” Hinata queries.

She shakes her head hard enough to feel her ponytail bouncing off the side of her head (and probably Yamaguchi’s shoulder, too). Now isn’t the time for her to receive Hinata’s comfort; he needs to finish his drink. They can always send each other memes in the group chat that’s supposed to be used for study group planning! They’ll see each other again after the break! Hinata would even text her good morning every day if she asked! But they’ll be two cities apart from each other, and even Hinata (who biked over a mountain twice every school day) can’t cross that distance without paying for the train ride.

“Actually,” she requests feebly, “can I have a hug when we leave?”

He nods like a cross between a metronome and a drinking bird, instantaneous and unwavering. “You can have as many hugs as you want!”

“Don’t make anyone miss their train,” chides Tsukishima, which is his way of agreeing to a group hug (probably).

It may be the end of the semester, but things aren’t over for them yet.

(Sakusa from Economics enters the café at some point during the conversation. “You should wear your apron, Miya.”

“Because it makes me look hot?” Atsumu grins because he may not have realized _it_ yet, but his brain-to-mouth filter is about as underdeveloped as Hitoka’s (when nervous, i.e. almost all the time).

Sakusa’s brow furrows over his yet-to-be-removed mask. “Never mind. Give Osamu-san my table; I’m never speaking to you again.”

He’s lying. Despite their frequent spats, things aren’t over for them yet, either.)

Hinata turns his phone around so that everyone at the table can look at the screen. “Hey, have you guys seen crouton.net?”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, crouton.net is a real website. Thanks to my roommate from last semester for showing it to me. I hope you never see this.


End file.
